by Juniper Dandridge
In Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, an inventor named John Galt has developed a new way of existence, a new society--and when asked by one intruder where the front door is, Galt answers "here" as he points to his forehead (Rand 652). Rand asks us to define our purpose as individuals and to harness reason and proffers that these two actions are the precursors to success; "It is ideas that determine social trends, that create or destroy social systems. Therefore, the right to ideas, the right philosophy, should be advocated and spread. The disasters of the modern world , including the destruction of capitalism, were caused by the altruist-collectivist philosophy..." (Playboy Interview 15).
What ideas determined the social trends of Beverly Hills? What philosophy created Beverly Hills' social system? What is this place besides a city that was incorporated in 1914, the brainchild of one named Burton Green who wanted to call the place Beverly Farm until his wife Lillian talked him out of it (Wagner 30). No fool was old Lillian, she knew most people would much rather live on a hill, as opposed to a farm (a farm hardly possessed the romantic connotations back in the early 1900's that it does currently). Lillian's branding became the Mecca of wealth the world over that we have all come to revere as a symbol of power and money, the hyper- achievement of the "American dream."
Does Beverly Hills owe its existence and fame to the spirit of creativity? Was Beverly Hills created by and for the almighty dollar - - a community akin to the one formed by John Galt in Atlas Shrugged ? Why is one tempted to judge unkindly the great expanses of pools and tennis courts if not simply out of a sour grapes mentality? Consider Poe when he suggested, "search wisely and search well if you search for El Dorado."
I will argue that the Beverly Hills of today is in fact Ayn Rand's idea of a utopia, although Beverly Hills is a place where emotions run rampant, where vanity is the seat of rationalism, and where the crippled form of rationalism hobbles the street on crutches. Indeed, in Beverly Hills, free will is handcuffed and under the arrest of personal ego. I will prove by applying Rand's ideals displayed throughout her philosophy of Objectivism that the city of Beverly Hills pulls the plug on Jeremy Bentham's night watchman state (the governing body is best which governs least). The city replaces it with "Big Brother" as the only conscious determining principal in economics, social engineering and the execution of the law. Although I disagree with Rand on one fundamental point: I do not believe that the application of reason is the choice that most people reach out to automatically or naturally. I find in particular her statement that "In any historical period when men were free, it has always been the most rational philosophy that won" (Playboy 16) erroneous at best, an attack upon this section of her philosophy will not enter into this paper.
Rand said that society is not deterministic by nature, the reason being that the individual has free will. Beverly Hills quite literally began as a community created by the free will of Burton Green, the power of the dollar backing his will up. The city historically, and still today is representative of a group of individuals who have become successful via their own minds; they are as Rand would call them, prime movers. As an employee of these prime movers, Mauricio Arocha, a Park Ranger with the City, summed up a lot of Rand's theory in a slow and thoughtful manner when I asked him for his general perception of the City after being employed by it for a number of years;
"The people of Beverly Hills have attained something, why not let them have it? I'm a supporter of that ideal- it's the kernel of what we have built great empires on. If I make a lot of money I want my neighbor to be comfortable with that - it's human nature. It's like the old courts, some of the opulence was fabricated - they are living - some of them beyond their means. I don't find wealth hypocritical, wealth does not offend me - it's almost Social Darwinism, the rich rise, it's something that Marx wanted to tear down."
Rand preached that the pursuit of the dollar was one of man's highest purposes, and this is absolutely reflected in Beverly Hills where in 1995, the total deposits into the City's financial institutions was $5.3 million. In fact 28.3 percent of the City's population identified themselves as a professional; 23.2 percent, executive; 20.2 percent, sales. Compare this to the Los Angelos labor force, same occupations but the numbers are much lower, for a much larger area; professional, 14.4 percent; executive, 13.2 percent; sales, 12.4 percent, (1997 Economic Profile 7).
"...the dollar sign is made clear in Atlas Shrugged. It is the symbol, clearly explained in the story, of free trade and, therefore, of a free mind. A free mind and a free economy are corollaries. One can't exist without the other. The dollar sign, as the symbol of the currency of a free country, is the symbol of a free mind" (Playboy Interview 9).
Along this path of freedom, Rand was not a believer in America's tax system and would not then consider kindly the City of Beverly Hills' methods of taxing its citizenry. As Bob Chavez, Parks and Urban Forest Manager told me when I asked him where his and other funding for the beautification and maintenance of the city comes from; "Any houses having upgrades done on them pay a construction tax, and it's not a light one- so that's where the major source of our funding comes from." This taxation also funds the city's atmosphere, as I learned upon asking Mr. Chavez what an "urban forest" is; "All the city street trees. I am responsible for the 25 thousand trees lining the streets of Beverly Hills." - Rand believed "that taxation should be voluntary, like everything else" (Playboy Interview 12).
At this point I must explain the Objectivist language. The definition of a producer, sometimes called a prime mover, is this: a man who is an end in himself, not as a means to a further end. The author of this language is the aforementioned Ayn (rhymes with fine) Rand. Objectivism encompasses more than politics and economics, indeed it is a complete philosophical theory; simply put, Objectivism sets forth a new kind of ethics which Rand defined as a "morality of rational self-interest" (Playboy 4).
Rand was a playwright, screen writer, novelist and finally a philosopher, as she said, "I had to originate a philosophical framework of my own, because my basic view of man and of existence was in conflict with most of the excising philosophical theories. In order to define, explain, and present my concept of man, I had to become a philosopher in the specific meaning of the term" ( Peikoff 157). Objectivism "seeks to provide men - or those who care to think - with an integrated, consistent and rational view if life" (The Playboy Interview 5).
Rand first portrayed her philosophy in the form of the heroes of her novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Objectivism is explicit; "existence exists- and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists" ( Peikoff 1). In applying Objectivism we ask if there were any prime movers in Beverly Hills, who were they, who are they today, from the area's inception as an "ideal and exclusive residential community" (Wagner 25) through 1919 when Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford built Pickfair, until the present.
In seeking to typify Rand's philosophy, one need reach no further than the bookshelf for Atlas Shrugged, this weighty novel set (for the most part) in New York City, follows the decline and fall of the United States. Set in the early 1900's we follow the path of one Dagny Taggart, who becomes VP of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. Through Dagny's somewhat myopic eyes we view a society slowly being eaten by a cancer, the degenerative disease is commonly called "goodwill" toward man. For its time Rand produced a book full of imagination and bravado, yet here in 1997 it's beginning to look a lot more like Rand was simply prophetic.
The characters in Rand's fictional USA have started veering towards the far political left, they demonize the inventors, factory owners, educators and intellects. Indeed today we hear a similar rant from the Christian right and the have-nots, in this country and throughout the rest of the world. As the rate of inventions slow and the infrastructure begins to unravel for want of talent, a common refrain is heard throughout the nation. Whenever something goes wrong, or something happens that one does not understand, someone always asks rhetorically, "Who is John Galt?" We the readers do not meet him until very late in the book, yet we see his name on every other page. As it happens, John Galt has invited all the inventors, factory owners, anyone who takes pride in their work to join him on a picket line of the imagination. The people who walk this picket line are portrayed by Rand to be the true creators of wealth in the world. The scientist who develops a new form of steel, the designer of a more efficient engine, the great composers, doctors and surgeons. Rand even tosses in an actress, (the addition of an actress in Rand's mythical town serves to draw even a stronger correlation between this fictional town and Beverly Hills. As we shall see, much of the wealth and success which Beverly Hills is famous for, historically, and still today-- rests on the capitol brought in from the film industry.) Indeed all the minds that drive the world and fuel its expansion (Online,moose.erie.net). These individuals have come together to form a town, cut out of the mountains of Colorado. Its coat of arms a golden dollar sign that hangs, glittering above the town. The many parallels between this fictional community and Beverly Hills are clear, Beverly Hills does not, of coarse have a dollar sign literally hanging over it, but one can not term the wealth that one witnesses driving the streets of Beverly Hills metaphoric either.
In a Diary entry, Rand explains what prompted the writing of what became her most famous work; "I set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers, and how viciously it treats them " (Introduction, Peikoff 3). Her story is of the "rugged individual" in a society that demands conformity, the logical conclusion of what can happen when the system of capitalism, which is based on hard work, is perverted by the idea that people are owed a life.
Beverly Hills was incorporated as its own entity in 1914, so one is correct in referring to the city as an entity unto itself. Now the question is who and what makes a society revolve? Rand suggested that if one wishes to advocate a free society--which was to her a capitalist one--one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principal of individual rights (Man's Rights 1). Many might answer may be "the philanthropist" makes a society revolve, but there can be no giving without some taking involved. Is Beverly Hills the land of the ultimate take, a community of the nations most successful and famous takers? Or has Beverly Hills been successful as a community largely because of its longevity as being one of the city's most willing and able to give? Or is perhaps it a community of givers under the facade of takers? People who create with their heads and hearts-- an area where people have been and are capable of producing something which others are willing to pay for to possess. Is Beverly Hills then the city that individuals produced via their own successful production?
Clearly the concept of sharing and giving rests entirely upon an already successful society, one that is well established, one where men are allowed to own what they earn. Rand views ownership and action as one and the same; "bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values" (Man's Rights and The Nature of Government 3). The rich cannot give to the poor without first having something to give; that is the capital which is corollary to success, at least in the free market system that we call home. In fact according to Rand, man does not have the right to give unless he owns and earns, and indeed as per Raffaela Carnel, Secretary to Public Affairs for the City, Beverly Hills does "a lot of giving." Some examples of the City's philanthropic nature are as follows; Beverly Hills Senior Association, $8,000 quarterly; The Maple Center, $150,000 annually; Beverly Hills Ministerial Association, $42,000 annually; Los Angeles Free Clinic, $25,000 annually; Beverly Hills Symphony, $25,000; People Assisting the Homeless, $17,000; Beverly Hills Theater Guild, $25,000; and the West Side Food Bank $60,000 annually.
When Alvin Toffler asked Rand if she considered the support of charities immoral said "...my views on charity are every simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people , if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them" (Playboy Interview 10). Therefore we may conclude that perhaps Rand would only have been against the food bank contribution and the Homeless funds - for these people she would no doubt have considered unworthy recipients of unearned capitol. The fact that these donations are made via the city's profits (collected from its Condominium Conversion tax and its rather high Transient Occupational tax, at 14 percent and its Film Permit Revenue (1997 Economic Profile 6) - among other tariffs the latter two tariffs placed upon those who simply travel through the city - and not from the individual residents) would have definitely produced her ire.
In a sense, Beverly Hills makes quite a lot of money from those who do not produce but merely pass through this system of producers, typically referred to as tourists. The four major hotels in which they stay, the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Regent Beverly Wilshire, The Peninsula Beverly Hills and The Beverly Hills Hotel, generate approximately 15 percent of the total City budget, and compared to 1995 the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) collections increased by 27 percent, while the actual hotel occupancy increased by only 5 percent. However, compare the Beverly Hills "Occupancy rate," i.e. how many tourist heads hit the pillow per year, with the greater Los Angeles area; in 1996 Beverly Hills Occupancy rate was 75.67% , excellent by any means, but particularly when compared with Downtown's occupancy rate of 60.78% or even Hollywood's 72.98%. This means that Beverly Hills is considered a key destination among domestic and international visitors; business guests and leisure travelers occupy 76 percent of the City's 1,831 hotel rooms (1997 Economic Profile 9) while 24 percent of the rooms remain empty. For more on the City's humble beginnings in the tourism industry, see below.
What if we re-write a bit of Rand's novel, pad it out (as if it needed it) and add a chapter; what if the inventors that Galt has invited on strike were to build a machine that would catapult Galt out of the Colorado Mountains and off the pages of Rand's novel and land him smack in the middle of Rodeo Drive? The first thing Galt sees is the flashing "Don't Walk" sign. But why can't he walk? As a free rational man - Galt is instantly aware that the city of Beverly Hills has far exceeded the idea of a night watchman state. However Galt would also be interested to find that the city's total expenditure is $113,275,758 and that this amount is well apportioned among General Government, $18,906,152; Public Safety, $31,932,275; transportation, $14,909,589; commercial development, $5,643,931; health, $15,443,2345; culture and leisure, $14,945,089 and public utilities, $11,495,487. Galt would be interested because, via the free will and individualistic spirit of the people inhabiting this City, they as a unit have determined to reinvest much of their hard earned money back into their city. One major motive for doing this is undoubtedly to keep tourism hopping - they are as perhaps Rand would say, making the fundamental choice, the epistemological choice between reason and non-reason, and choosing reason as personified by economic power.
Galt would undoubtedly be a bit surprised to learn, for example that the largest employer of the city is the city itself, at 950 employees. In Atlas Shrugged we are informed by one of Galt's converts that "Only those who add to my life, not those who devour it, are my market. Only those who produce, not those who consume, can ever be anyone's market " (Rand 666). Here Rand's utopia employs men by the hundreds to scrub the side walks and beautify the public streets for the consumers themselves; the tourist. Indeed of the top employers in the city, second and third are both aforementioned Hotels for the consumers to stay in, while they use, then leave the city behind them; Beverly Hilton Hotel at 800 employees, and Regent Beverly Wilshire at 632 employees (1997 Economic Profile). However, one must make the leap and question who these tourists are, hardly Hollywood runaways! Perhaps the fact that one can travel and stay in Beverly Hills marks him as something of a prime mover himself. The City is well aware of its own commercial value, indeed its projected revenues for 1997 were $91,920,056, well over 1996's actual revenue of $86,333,848.
And what would Galt have made of the original settlers of the area, the indigenous peoples, if he were to be transported in the opposite direction, into the past? On the land that we now call Beverly Hills was once a settlement of Indians, whom Spanish missionaries named Gabrielino. At first it may appear that the Spanish were the original prime movers of the area, for the Gabrielino were first over run, then decimated. Rand's philosophy has a clearly defined system of ethics, one which states "the standard of value of the Objectivist ethics is; man's life - man's survival qua man - or that which the nature of a rational being requires for his proper survival. The Objectivist ethics, in essence, hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice others to himself. It is this last that Galt's statement summarizes " (Playboy 5).
Galt had, upon the creation of his community written an oath which the new residents take. They swear on their own lives " - and my love of it - that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask that another man to live for mine" (Playboy 5), and so upon second blush, the Gabrielino are now the Objectivists, preferring to die than live for another man's sake. Would Galt befriend these people and urge them to take arms against the Spanish invaders?
As Rand states, "men have the right to use physical force only in self defense and only against those who initiate its use" (Man's Rights and The Nature of Government 11), however the Gabrielino offered no recorded uprisings. One of the reasons why no resistance was offered may stem from their practiced faith. The Gabrielino followed a religious theory that is today known as animism, the belief that an immaterial force animates the universe, the existence of spiritual beings that are separate from the body and the actual attribution of a conscious life to nature. And so the Gabrielino people and their culture ended perhaps, due to their belief in powers outside themselves and their idea that there is a spirit and life in everything surrounding them and that man is at the behest of these multiple spirits, rather than the other way around. As Rand opined; "Reality, the external world, exists independent of man's consciousness, independent of any observers knowledge, beliefs, feelings, desires, or fears. This means that A is A, that facts are facts, that things are what they are-- and that the task of man's consciousness is to perceive reality, not create or invent it" (Rand Online aynrand.org).
Thus Objectivism rejects any belief in the supernatural-- and any claim that individuals or groups create their own reality. The Indians allowed their environment to control them rather than the Catholic Spanish belief that they would control their environment per their God's will.
This all masked the facts of why the Spanish were truly successful. Actually, had they truly accepted the Christian ideal they would never have had any monetary gain what-so-ever. Christianity, the religion of humility and sacrifice, does not jibe with bringing home as much gold as any one ship can carry. The Spanish did not come to the Americas and therefore to the indigenous population on a humanitarian mission; the main concern was not bringing Catholicism as was publicized. It should be said that Conquistadors and missionaries were different. Although in close cooperation, not all had the same attitudes. It would appear however, that everyone was there to make money. Clearly, excluding the hierarchy of the Church and Billy Graham, no one has ever really been able to make much profit off simply preaching the "good" word. Galt no doubt would have been more disgusted by the Spanish enslavement of the Indians, and perhaps his oath would have been taught to the Gabrielino; "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (Rand 675).
"When the Spanish returned in 1771 they introduced the Gabrielino to Christ, conversion, baptism, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, alcohol and the dawn- to -sunset working day and the handy art of killing themselves" (Wagner 12) The Gabrielino proved they did not posses what marks the successful in Western European civilization; ambition, challenge and the drive to assimilate and subvert if necessary any beneficial points to be found in an invading culture (notice this was a point not lost on the Greeks, who in the end survived longer than their invaders did). Indeed, approximately one thousand Gabrielino learned that it was a mercy to die at their own hand and slashed their throats and wrists as an alternative to the imposed slavery that the building of the Missions brought. Three thousand more died of disease and starvation, by 1784 no trace of the Gabrielino tribe was left.
"In the space of a single lifetime, the Gabrielino nation, whose territory once stretched over a vast portion of the Los Angeles basin and whose people had numbered in the thousands were reduced to near extinction" (The Gabrielino 27).
They had disappeared so completely that ironically except for dairies like those of Father Crespi, barely anything remains to show that they ever existed, save the San Gabrial mountains, named in their honor.
Rand would have been equally unimpressed with both the Gabrielino and the Spanish invaders, for she was indignant and brusque on the point of religion, and the practice of faith; "Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which man should strive to emulate. Yet, according to he Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non--ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice."
When asked if she believed any religion has ever offered anything to human existence, Rand stated "Qua religion, no - in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusion of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason" (Playboy 9) - was it this detriment in reason which rendered the Gabrielino powerless against at least a more practically motivated Spaniard?
At the antithesis of the suffering experienced by the Gabrielino, many of the Spanish involved in this original expedition profited immensely in charting what would become California, and wresting it from the hands of the indigenous peoples. The Commander of the original expedition in fact was the future first governor of California quite literally paving the way for our Governor of today. The guide of the expedition was Juan B. Valdez; it would be his granddaughter, Maria Rita Valdez who would first lay a formal claim to Rancho Rodeo de Las Aguas, or Ranch of the Gathering Waters- the future city of Beverly Hills. Indeed Maria Rita and her grandfather were the first documented case of a trickle down effect between the prime movers of yesteryear and the benefits their relatives today continue to reap from their producer heritage.
The Valdez family emigrated from Sonoma, Mexico in 1781. Maria Rita Valdez, along with her husband and children, came to live at Rancho Rodeo de Las Aguas sometime in the 1822, the same year that California passed from Spanish to Mexican rule. In 1832 a tract of land within Rancho Rodeo known as San Antonia was deeded to Maria Rita and a male relative, her husband having by this time passed away, Luciano Valdez by Governor Alvarado of California. Maria Rita and her eight children lived in an adobe house near the present intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Alpine Dive. Maria Rita used the land as ranch land, and cattle and horses were allowed to graze freely.
Trouble developed almost immediately between Luciano and Maria Rita, and finally Luciano was ordered off the land by the Los Angeles City Council and Maria Rita became sole owner of Rancho de Las Aguas. This tract of land was exactly 4.539 acres of the richest and most fertile land around due to the streams that flowed seasonally through it.
Due to repeated Apache Indian attacks, in 1854 Maria Rita sold her ranch to an American who, due to his first marriage to a wealthy Mexican woman, had added the title Don to his name, being thus known as Don Benito Wilson. The other American was none other than Harry Hancock. It is suggested that these two Americans actually paid three Apache Indians to attack Maria Rita's home, and either kill the family, or at the very least terrify them enough to incite Maria Rita to sell (Wagner). So perhaps by hook and crook, Wilson and Hancock acquired the entire Ranch for $500 cash, $500 in notes and the remaining $3,000 contingent upon title and patents. Indeed the entire future City of Beverly Hills was estimated to be worth, and sold for $4,000!
And so we see that at least historically, selfishness is a virtue, as it is considered to be in Rand's philosophy. In the final analysis, the Gabrielino people were not prime movers, but first allowed themselves to be used as a means to a further end, then died off or killed themselves as their only viable means to stop it. Rand notes that " ...the average man does not posses the genius' power of self confident resistance, and will break much faster, he will give up his mind, in hopeless bewilderment, under the first touch of pressure" (Online aynrand.org).
When they tired of being used, they did not revolt nor did they assimilate. Maria Rita was in a sense yet another casualty. Although she displayed bravado in acquiring the property, she lost it to superior means of manipulation, planning and in a very real sense, an economically superior thought process. "Thinking is a delicate, difficult process, which man cannot perform unless knowledge is his goal, logic is his method, and the judgment of his mind is his guiding absolute. Thought requires selfishness, the fundamental selfishness of a rational faculty that places nothing above the integrity of it's own function" (The Philosophy of Objectivism: A Brief Summary 5).
Maria Rita Valdez was pitted against two minds who saw the potential of the land for something beyond Ranching, and, Rancher that she was, she didn't stand a chance.
In 1865 oil was discovered in California, but little to none lay within the borders of Rancho Rodeo de Las Aguas and Wilson, now desperate to make good on his investment, began dividing up tracts of land to be sold. Wilson found the sale of the land, now arid from years of grazing, slow but managed to sell off all remaining land, 3,608 acres to a Mr. Edward Preuss for $10,775. Incidentally, and not without some irony Maria however did not receive her remaining $3000 until 1871 when the Government finally confirmed the validity of her title.
Edward Pruess envisioned a city springing up on the land he owned and therefore a comparison between the original investors Wilson and Hancock to Pruess per Rand's philosophy becomes quite interesting; Rand believed that "the man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others" (Playboy 6). Wilson and Hancock, it has been suggested, quite literally set out to destroy Maria Rita and her family, to take from her what was hers by devious and evil means. However they apparently had no purpose, or plan for their investment, and it is mildly ironic to note that Wilson eventually went bankrupt and Hancock shot himself (History of Beverly Hills 19). The original Anglo investors undoubtedly thought or felt that they had some purpose, however "...if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind to rationalize or justify them somehow - then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction - his own and that of others" ( Playboy 7).
Pruess, however, had a very definite plan. He formed a partnership with F.F.P. Temple; they in turn hired George Hanson, a surveyor for the City of Los Angeles to lay out city lots consisting of five acres each, which they planned to sell at 10.00 dollars apiece. The surveyed land encompassed the present day Beverly Hills business district. Pruess conceived the area as a German Colony which he christened Santa Maria. However, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry--another drought set in. The partnership was nullified, and the land again reverted to ranching, one cannot help but think of Maria Rita, still living in the Hollywood area where several of her children owned a ranch, sitting back and having a chuckle at the gringos expense.
This brings us up to the year 1900, when another oil fever hit. A group called Amalgamated Oil Company composed of Burton Green, Max Whittier and others purchased parts of the area to explore for oil. The oil venture failed, but the investors reasoned that the land might be put to a different use and reorganized. In 1906, they developed Rodeo Land and Water Company with the idea of building an ideal residential community (Beverly Hills 27). Burton Green was the guiding hand in this venture; he was instrumental in the layout of the community, the number of parks and the overall design of what would become the business district. Because the land had a barren, dry look after years of grazing, Green had the idea to hire horticulteralist John J. Reeves and commissioned him to plant trees wherever he saw fit, regardless of the cost. It was also through Green's direct suggestion that all of the investors purchased lots and moved their families into the burgeoning city (Beverly Hills 46).
In 1909 as the Los Angeles housing market became active, the Beverly Hills market remained sluggish, the feeling being that Beverly Hills was much too far away from Central Los Angeles. To give their investment a much needed boost, Green decided to build a hotel. He patterned his idea on the success of the once grand Hollywood Hotel. Green planned a hotel that he hoped would be so incredible that it would draw visitors from the East as well as Europe, including the famous of the local area as well. In 1910 construction on the Beverly Hills Hotel began on what had previously been a large bean field. The Hotel opened its doors two years later, in 1912. Later, across from the hotel a large fountain and reflecting pool were dug to further entice people to visit the grand hotel, which was still unfortunately surrounded by nothing but beans. Green's idea proved unimaginably successful and the area began to draw the rich and famous and with them the newspaper coverage which inevitably follows, slowly Beverly Hills began to be reported as the place to be.
However what really put Beverly Hills on the map, albeit not literally, was when Douglas Fairbanks, in 1919, purchased an old hunting lodge off of Summit Drive, as a retreat for himself and his girlfriend Mary Pickford. By 1920 the lodge had been completely remodeled and the two were married. While the happy couple were entertaining crowned heads and politicians at Pickfair, the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle scandal broke in September of 1921. Suddenly Hollywood was being reported as a City of sin, and the film industry, smelling disaster, hired William B. Hays as the moral guardian for the movies, or as one actress of the time put it, his real function was simply to decide "how much leg and tit could be shown in Iowa" (Beverly Hills, Inside the Golden Ghetto 28). Hays recommended that actors with careers to save remove themselves from the city of Hollywood, creating the illusion of moral distance. With Pickfair making positive headlines and the Beverly Hills Hotel's grander becoming legendary, Beverly Hills seemed the most logical place to be. Gloria Swanson followed the Fairbanks couple, Swanson was followed by Will Rodgers, Charlie Chaplin and Tom Mix. This brought a huge influx of prestige, money and interesting, indeed palatial, architecture to the area. By 1927 building permits for upwards of $300,000 were being issued, and then just as now the tax collected on these building permits was poured directly back into the beautification of the city itself.
While clearly these individuals gave a lot, not only to their community, but to the world and American culture through their talent and artistry, it must be remembered that to succeed so hugely, particularly as an actor in the film industry, each of these individuals had to have held, simply qua their survival, an Objectivist ethic. "The Objectivist ethics, in essence, hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others..." Playboy 5). Therefore it is this Objectivist ethic which continued to permeate and amalgamate the City into surviving so successfully.
Today Beverly Hills continues to be the most famous residential community in the United States, and certainly an extremely ideal one; Burton Green succeeded completely. Safety is a large part of what defines an ideal community and Beverly Hills "enjoys the distinction of having some of the safest streets to be found anywhere on the globe" (1997 Economic Profile 4). "The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave" (Man's Rights and The Nature of Government 3.)
The Residents of Beverly Hills by and large have sustained their lifestyle by their own effort, or the efforts of a prior generation and spend 36 percent of the City's budget to protect their property rights (1997 Economic Profile 6). Employed by the city are 4.4 police officers per 1,000 residents, and the response time to a call is three minutes. In fact, since 1995 when the community and the police department joined forces to form "Police and Community Together Task Force, " crime has decreased by 5 percent. That measures out to under 3000 crimes committed per 100,000 residents and as of the 1990 census, the population in Beverly Hills was estimated at 33,300.
When I interviewed Officer Chris Cannon he told me that previous to being on the Beverly Hills Police force, of which he has been a member for seven years, he had been on the L.A.P.D for 3 years. I asked Officer Cannon to compare his time with the L.A.P.D. and the amount of times he had come into contact with violent, or potentially violent situations in Beverly Hills. After Officer Cannon stopped laughing he fixed me with a gaze that held a definite twinkle and said "hmmm, where violence is concerned? It's hard to say--it's close," then he winked at me. In the Beverly Hills Police Department Neighborhood Watchdog newsletter for May and June, as well as the bulletin for July and August the most frequent crime was bicycle and auto theft, the most violent; car windows smashed to steal laptop computers and cellular phones. Rand would definitely applaud the people of Beverly Hills, as well as Burton Green. Green as a prime mover, and the residence of the City as producers.
Throughout Atlas Shrugged Rand shows repeatedly that the only means to a full existence is to use one's mind in the pursuit of reason. "Man's mind is his basic tool for survival. Life is given to him, it's sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, it's contents is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch--or build a cyclotron--without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think" (Atlas Shrugged).
The United States is leading the way towards a world where sustenance for the body is simply fried and deposited in a bun; where stimulation for the mind is a television set, automatically equipped with a satellite dish, the programming aimed at 4 to 12 year olds, now perhaps Rand's expectation of man, not only formulating thought, but actually being aware enough to choose a philosophical view, may seem a bit dated. After all, who can choose a philosophy when one has so many malls to visit?
More people have an opportunity to receive an education in this country today than during any other time in history. More people are pursuing higher education than at any other time as well (American Heritage 41). In Beverly Hills this trend is a phenomenon; while 19 percent of the country's high school seniors enroll in some type of higher education (American Heritage) in Beverly Hills 95 percent of the high school students enroll in a four-year University. In addition, over 30 percent of the District's graduates go on to the University of California system, which accepts only the top 12 percent of students in the state ( Office of the Superintendent, Beverly Hills Unified School District). The question in America as we approach the 21st century is not wether we have basic tools for survival, the question now is what tools do we have to pursue what kind of lifestyle? Which socio-economic bracket are we prepared to vault ourselves into?
"Aristotle and Objectivism agree on fundamentals and, as a result, on this last point, also. Both hold that man can deal with reality, can achieve values, can live non--tragically. Neither believes in man the worm or man the monster; each upholds man the thinker and therefor man the hero. Aristotle calls him "the great--souled man." Ayn Rand calls him Howard Roarke, or John Galt. In every era, by their nature, man must struggle: they must work, knowingly of not, to actualize some vision of the human potential, weather consistent or contradictory, exalted or debased. They must, ultimately, make a fundamental choice, which determines their other choices and their fate. The fundamental choice, which is always the same, is the epistemological choice: reason or non--reason" ( The Philosophy of Objectivism: A Brief Summary 8)
Since the Spanish invaded the Gabrielino, since Wilson and Hancock, Pruess, Green and the stars of the screen, since each succession of conquerors came to the area of Beverly Hills, each one has been a bit more equipped with the notion of the choice the individuals that comprise a community must make, between rational and non-rational thought. Financial success has been the immediate corollary to Beverly Hills consciously adhering to the process of rational thought. Through the observation of the Objectivist ethic and the examination of the Objectivist epistemology, I have shown that Beverly Hills does indeed resemble Ayn Rands philosophy, in action. The philosophy of the community which Rand created fictitiously in Atlas Shrugged is alive and well in Beverly Hills.
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